Computer software applications allow users to create a variety of documents to assist them in work, education, and leisure. For example, popular word processing applications allow users to create letters, articles, books, memoranda, and the like. Spreadsheet applications allow users to store, manipulate, print, and display a variety of alphanumeric data. Such applications have a number of well-known strengths including rich editing, formatting, printing, calculation, and on-line and off-line editing.
A typical software application, such as a word processing application, may have tens or even hundreds of style and formatting properties that may be applied to text and/or data. For example, a word processing application may support many combinations of styles and formatting that may be selected by a user. For example, a style called “Header 1” may be selected by a user for automatically applying a certain font size, display and print justification, tab settings and the like. In addition to numerous settings that may be provided by application developers, many applications also allow a user to develop custom style and formatting settings.
According to prior systems, all of the possible style and formatting settings available to the user, whether used or not, are instantiated when the user saves the document. Unfortunately, when the user opens the document with a newer or different version of the software application that has the same or similar style settings but with different individual properties for the same or similar style settings, the user is stuck with the style or formatting settings instantiated for the document using the previous or creating application. Additionally, the software user may be allowed by his application to dictate that certain styles or formatting settings must be used or that certain styles or formatting settings may not be used with a particular document. In such cases, these styles or formatting settings are likewise instantiated upon document save which prevents the use of future changes to the styles or formatting settings allowed or disallowed by the user. Moreover, instantiation of all styles and formatting settings from a given software application causes the file size of a saved document to be excessive.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.